Australia's selectors nailed it, with one glaring exception

The Australian selectors have picked their boldest Test squad in many years, with three rookie batsmen named in the top six for the day-night match against South Africa in Adelaide this week.

Nic Maddinson, however, was a truly unexpected choice. Australia needed to stiffen their batting line-up after horrific collapses in the first two Tests, so picking a cavalier strokemaker in Maddinson seems an odd choice.

I will get back to Maddinson’s selection later after congratulating the selectors for plumping for youth.

In the past ten years, Australia have given Test debuts to only four specialist batsmen aged younger than 28 years old – Phil Hughes, David Warner, Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja.

Incredibly, we will see three batsmen aged 25 or younger debut in one Test at Adelaide, with 24-year-old Nic Maddinson to be joined in the Australia XI by 20-year-old Matt Renshaw and 25-year-old Peter Handscomb.

It was a tough decision to drop Joe Burns after just one Test back in the team – his scores of 1, 0, 4 and 2 in the past week obviously spooked the selectors. I would have favoured giving the 27-year-old further opportunities, however the ascension of Renshaw to the Test side is exciting.

Renshaw’s game is tailor-made for Test cricket. I have not seen a 20-year-old Australian batsman who looks so well equipped to make the leap to Tests since Michael Clarke 15 years ago. While he is prodigiously talented, what sets Renshaw apart from most other young Australian batsmen is his match awareness and versatility.

Too many Australian cricketers, including Test players, are only capable of batting comfortably at one speed. When they need to bat for time, or graft through a tough session, they look decidedly out of their element. Not Renshaw. This was evident from as early as his third innings in first-class cricket.

In that knock, a 19-year-old Renshaw found himself under siege from a gun Tasmanian attack featuring three former Test pacemen Jackson Bird, James Faulkner and Ben Hilfenhaus plus seamer Andrew Fekete who, just weeks earlier, had been picked in the Test squad for the abandoned tour of Bangladesh.

Renshaw’s job was to take the shine off the ball and he did just that in old-school opener fashion. He crawled to 37 from 149 balls, hitting just two boundaries in 197 minutes. It wasn’t an attractive innings but it was crucial in the context of the match, denying the powerful Tasmanian attack early momentum and helping Queensland to a tight win.

It was in the latest round of the Shield that we got to see the manner in which Renshaw is able to seamlessly switch gears during an innings or match, tailoring his approach to the circumstances.

I wrote last week about Australia’s need for a new Chris Rogers, a batsman who is able to make ugly runs – scraping together a score when they’re not seeing the ball well or when the bowlers are on well on top.

Renshaw is such a batsman, as he displayed against South Australia at the Gabba en route to a first innings ton. The left hander struggled for even a modicum of fluency for the first two hours of that innings.

He looked scratchy throughout that period but did not lose his patience and attempt to break the shackles. Renshaw plodded to 22 from 102 deliveries before he began to find the middle of the bat.

Safe in the knowledge he had weathered this torrid period he duly expanded his game. Renshaw’s next 86 runs came from just 100 balls. He was savage against leg-spinner Adam Zampa, four times lofting him down the ground for six in a style reminiscent of Matthew Hayden’s belligerent best.

In the second innings, Renshaw played like an entirely different batsman. Queensland needed to move the game on in search of an outright victory, so Renshaw played with aggressive intent, slapping Chadd Sayers for a raft of boundaries as he made 50 from 51 balls.

Whether Renshaw can succeed in his first stint in international cricket is anyone’s guess. There is no doubt, however, that his approach to batting is well suited to Test cricket.

The same cannot be said of Maddinson. The New South Welshman plays like a graduate of the Glenn Maxwell School of Batting.

Maddinson made his Shield debut six years ago at just 18 years of age and in his first two seasons he opened the batting and played in a traditional, cautious style, with a strike rate in the mid-40s.

Then, in his third season, Maddinson unveiled a new, dynamic approach, lifting his strike rate up to 72 in the 2012-13 Shield campaign. His belligerence reached its zenith in the winter of 2013 when, on the Australia A tour of Europe, he smashed 300 runs from just 223 balls across his four first-class innings.

It was an incredible transformation from the patient batsman we had seen in Maddinson’s first two seasons. While he has reined himself in a bit since that tour of Europe, Maddinson remains one of the most attacking batsmen in the Shield.

He feeds off boundaries. Offer him a skerrick of width outside off stump and you’ll get carved to the square fence. Pitch it up and Maddinson will look to slam you down the ground. He is not a batsman who can handle being tied down, or who places a high price on his wicket.

That’s what makes him a strange selection at this point in time. If Australia had a settled, dependable top seven then a player of his audacity and expansive talent could add some variety and menace. But the Australian batting line-up is not solid, it is a shambles and is crying out for stoic batsmen rather than flashy ones.

This is particularly the case for the Adelaide Test, to be played on a moist deck which will suit South Africa’s supreme pace attack. In such circumstances, it is patient, compact batsmen who typically thrive.

It was a shock to see Maddinson picked ahead of his teammate, 23-year-old Kurtis Patterson, who has had a tremendous past twelve months in first-class cricket and owns a well-rounded game.

Maddinson replaces Callum Ferguson who is frightfully unlucky to have been offered just one Test match before being dumped.

There was less surprise in the omissions of Adam Voges, Peter Nevill and Joe Mennie. Voges has averaged just 11 from his past nine Test innings and suffered a concussion from a nasty blow to his helmet in the Shield on Thursday.

Nevill’s keeping was neat but he averaged a paltry 22 with the bat from 17 Tests. If Australia’s top six was in good order it would have been worth persisting with Nevill to see if he could find his groove with the bat. No such leeway was possible with the batting line-up falling apart.

Nevill’s replacement Matthew Wade is not in the same league as a gloveman but he has improved his keeping significantly since his first stint in the Test team in 2012 and 2013. The hope is that Wade will strengthen the batting. That is a fair assumption to make given that in his 12 Tests he averaged 35 with the bat and made two tons.

What remains to be seen is how many runs Wade’s glovework will cost Australia.

Like the omission of Ferguson, Mennie’s dumping after a solitary Test was harsh. Yet few Australian cricket followers would want Mennie in the attack on a juicy Adelaide pitch ahead of swing bowlers Jackson Bird and Chadd Sayers, both of whom were named in the squad.

While the selection of Maddinson feels incorrectly timed, it is wonderful to see young talent finally being blooded in the Australian Test team, which in recent years had become a virtual Pensioner’s XI.

Australian squad for third Test in Adelaide
Steve Smith (c), David Warner (vc), Matt Renshaw, Usman Khawaja, Peter Handscomb, Nic Maddinson, Matthew Wade, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Chadd Sayers, Jackson Bird.